Blog

2017-12-26 - Earlier this month Counting Flowers’ Elike and Matthijs visited one of the refugee camps in the high north of Thailand. An impressive day it was! Our goal: to bring a little light to the thousands of people who have been living there since the mid eighties.

We were already familiar with the camp. In 2015 and 2016 Counting Flowers supported the Women Study Programme, enabling around sixty girls aged between 16 and 21 to follow a two year education programme.

We decided to provide 100 families with GravityLights after the big fire last July, so they could use those instead of having to burn candles to shed some light in the evenings. 

GravityLights are ingenious led-lights that work on the simple basis of gravity. Each set of lamps comes with an attached bag that should be filled with stones or sand.

When the heavy bag slowly descends, it creates electricity and the three connected lamps will burn. As soon as the bag reaches the floor the lights turn off.

By lifting the bag the process starts all over again. The families will have light as long as they like.

Matthijs demonstrates how to use the GravityLights

Time to try them out ourselves!
 

We received a heartbreaking welcome. The first families to receive a GravityLight were victim of the last fire. Luckily this time there were no casualties but the involved families lost all their, already scarce, belongings.

After a brief demonstration everyone was invited to try themselves. Because the lights are constructed in an easy way the ladies and gentlemen learned how to connect the lamps at home in no time.

The day ended with some special moments. One of the ladies who’s trying to earn a little money with her weaving work told us she’s so happy because now she will be able to continue weaving after dark.

The girls of the study programme are delighted that from now on they will be able to study in the evenings, something that’s almost impossible with only the light of a candle.

And one of the women laughed out loud and said her husband will have something to do now as well: lifting the heavy bag to make sure the family will have light all evening!

Elike hopes to bring more GravityLights to the camp in the future

We like to thank our customers for buying our scarves and shawls. With the profits we continue to support people in need, wherever we can.

Read more about GravityLights in Karenni Refugee Site 1;
Read more about the Women Study Programme;
View our collection scarves and shawls;
Visit our homepage.

Ladies on their way home, with a GravityLight

« Previous         -         Next »